How Magic Markers are Messing Up our Food System

In the aisles of Loblaws [2], between bottles of President's Choice Memories of Kobe sauce and Memories of Singapore noodles, there is a new in-store special: blacked-out labels on organic foods. These boxes used to say "free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)," but then Canada's largest grocery chain decreed that such labels were no longer permitted.

At first glance, its decision doesn't seem to make market sense. When the first frankenfoods protests came to Europe, chains such as Tesco and Safeway scrambled to satisfy consumer demand by labelling their own lines GMO-free. And when Loblaws entered the health-food market with its line of President's Choice Organics, it seemed to be going the same route. In ads, the company proudly pointed out that certified organic products "must be free of genetically modified organisms."

Then the about-face, made public last week: Not only won't Loblaws make the GM-free claim on its own packages, it won't allow anyone else to make the claim. Company executives say there is just no way of knowing what's genuinely GM-free - apparently, it's too confusing.

The Loblaws argument points to a much broader strategy that North American food and agriculture giants appear to be using to take on anti-GMO forces. The goal seems to be to mess up the food system faster than consumers can demand labelling. Political will is pitted against nuts-and-bolts practicality, so that by the time the political will arrives, effective labelling is no longer a pragmatic option.

More than 90 per cent of Canadians tell pollsters they want labels telling them if their food's genetic makeup has been tampered with, but Galen Weston [3], chairman of Loblaw Cos. Ltd., has publicly warned that "there will be a cost associated" with such an initiative. This, in part, explains the magic markers: If Loblaws carries organic products that are labelled GMO-free, it weakens attempts to block GM labelling for the roughly 70 per cent of Canadian foods that contain GM ingredients. So the grocer has made a rather brutal choice: Rather than give consumers some of the information they are demanding, it will provide none of it.

And this is only one salvo in a war being waged by the agri-business industry on consumer choice in the genetic engineering debate - not just in Canada but, potentially, around the world. Faced with 35 countries that have developed, or are developing, mandatory GE labelling laws, the industry seems to be doing everything it can to make those European and Asian labels as obsolete as the ones that have been scratched out at Loblaws. How? By polluting faster than countries can legislate.

A few reports from the frontlines:

One of the companies forced to remove its labels is Nature's Path [4], an organic food firm based in Delta, B.C. Earlier this month, company president Arran Stephens told the New York Times that GM material is, indeed, finding its way into organic crops. "We have found traces in corn that has been grown organically for 10-15 years. There's no wall high enough [5] to keep that stuff contained."

Some organic food companies are considering suing the biotech industry for contamination, but the law is going in the opposite direction. Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser [6] was sued by Monsanto [7], after its patented genetically altered canola seeds blew into the farmer's field from passing trucks and neighbouring fields. Monsanto says that, when the airborne seeds took root, Mr. Schmeiser was stealing its property. The court agreed and, two months ago, ordered the farmer to pay the company $20,000, plus legal costs.

The most well-known contamination case is StarLink corn [8]. After the genetically altered crop (meant for animals and deemed unfit for humans) made its way into the food supply, Aventis [9], which owns the patent, proposed a solution: Instead of recalling the corn, why not approve its consumption for humans? In other words, change the law to fit the contamination.

Around the world, consumers are exercising a renewed political power, demanding organic options at the supermarket and asking their governments for clear labelling of GMO foods. Yet all the while, the agri-business giants - backed by predatory intellectual property laws - are getting the global food supply so hopelessly cross-pollinated, contaminated, polluted and mixed up that legislators may well be forced to throw up their hands. As biotech critic Jeremy Rifkin [10] says, "They're hoping there's enough contamination so that it's a fait accompli."

When we look back on this moment, munching our genetically modified Natural Values(tm) health-style food, our human-approved StarLink tacos, and our mutated-farmed Atlantic salmon, we may well remember it as the precise point when we lost our real food options.

Perhaps Loblaws will even launch a new product to bottle that wistful feeling: Memories of Consumer Choice.

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